As newspaper circulation cartwheels into the abyss and print advertisers defect to the Web, publishers keep profit margins high by snipping, shearing, and slicing costs. The large-wingspan Wall Street Journal recently shrank its page size to the industry standard to save an estimated $18 million annually, and the New York Times will soon follow.Dollar-pinching publishers are now paying experienced reporters and editors to leave their jobs. Buyouts will soon reduce the Los Angeles Times to 850 journalists, about three-quarters of its peak.* The San Francisco Chronicle has announced plans to cut the newsroom from 400 to 300. The San Jose Mercury News employed 400 journalists seven years ago and will soon have only 200 crashing the keyboards. Similar stories can be told about the Dallas Morning News, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, and other newspapers. Foreign bureaus are being shuttered, and full-time arts slots at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, and elsewhere have been eliminated or downgraded.How many journalists can a newspaper jettison before its hair falls out and its ribs start showing?

The connection between quality and head count would seem intuitive, but a dip into the microfilm archives of the New York Times and Washington Post shows that decent newspapers have been produced with far fewer hands.

In the last three or four decades, newsroom staffs have ballooned almost everywhere. Today's Times employs about 1,200 newsroom staffers and the Post about 800. But 35 years ago, each produced a quality daily with about half that number, according to Leon V. Sigal's 1973 study, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking. Sigal found that the Times employed 500 "reporters, editors, and copyreaders" and the Post about 400 at the time.